Lance Cottrell of Abraxas: ‘Substantial Civil-Liberty Impacts’ But No Security Benefits with Large-Scale Internet Surveillance

It may not sound like the most straightforward avenue into cybersecurity, but Abraxas’ chief scientist and cyber expert Lance Cottrell began his career as an astronomer. Pursuing graduate studies in astrophysics in San Diego in the early 1990s, Cottrell had direct access to the Internet, the web, and high-speed backbones at a time where no one outside the scientific…